Jewels of Darkover by Deborah J. Ross

Author:Deborah J. Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ESP, space opera
Publisher: Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust
Published: 2023-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Fire Seed

by Diana L. Paxson

Diana L. Paxson has been writing since the 1970s. She is the author of thirty novels, seven non-fiction books, and, with this publication, a hundred short stories. She lives in a multi-generational, multi-gendered household in Berkeley. She is currently working on a non-fiction book about the Norse goddess Freyja and learning how to reissue some of her out-of-print novels and stories.

Fire weather...

I emptied the wastewater from breakfast into the pot where our housemate Ramona was growing herbs and straightened, sniffing the air. I could smell nothing worse than garbage lying in the lane between us and the inn. In the week since Midsummer there had been neither snow nor rain, and folk had passed from blessing the fine weather to complaining about the temperature, but the sky was still a translucent shade somewhere between amethyst and blue.

The kitchen door opened and my freemate, Cassilde, came through. She licked a finger to test the wind. “The wind is from the east. We won’t be called to the fire lines unless it blows from the north with news of a fire in the Thendara Hills.”

When the devil winds kindled the mountains, everyone heeded the call to fight the flames—Comyn and peasant, man and woman, the law-abiding Renunciates of Thendara House and our little community in what some called the Forbidden Guildhouse on the other side of town. If fires sparked in the hills beyond the Valeron, the call would come.

In this weather, it was all too likely. I felt sweat bead my forehead and wiped it away with my sleeve.

Cassi turned to go back inside and then stopped, pointing.

A thin figure was striding up the lane. A youth, I thought, at that age when limbs lengthen unexpectedly and one struggles to master a new body while trying to comprehend a changing soul. A scarf of the sort farmers wore in the country around Neskaya framed a head crowned with a fluff of ash-brown hair, like one of the birds that wade among the reeds beside the Valeron.

Closer, I realized it must be a girl. She was wearing a pair of loosely gathered Renunciate breeches that I remembered mending when I still lived at Thendara House, and despite her height, her cheeks bore no trace of down.

“Mestra Kiera?” Her eyes went from my freemate’s motherly form and blonde curls to my own lanky frame and ginger hair.

Blue eyes...bright as a matrix shard, bright as the eyes that had enchanted me that year when I was getting some long-deferred training at the tower at Neskaya and living in the Renunciate Guildhouse in the town.

“Evanda’s mercy!” I breathed. “You must be Mhari’s child!!” I looked up, and up. “Leona! How you’ve grown...” She colored up, shifting from one foot to the other as I fought down memories.

“Mestra Kiera, my mother sends greetings and calls on your promise to foster me!”

“Well, for Evanda’s sake, don’t keep her standing on the doorstep!” Cassi rescued me. “Come inside, both of you! I think that Ramona can find something to fill a growing girl,” she went on, shepherding us both inside.

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